.jpg)
Labor Day lands on Monday, September 7 this year, which puts the weekend at Saturday the 5th through Monday the 7th. Most families across Dallas-Fort Worth will spend Friday night scrolling event listings, give up somewhere around eleven, and end up Saturday at the same restaurant off the same highway exit they always take. I've done it. Probably you have too.
The Metroplex has more open over Labor Day than almost anywhere else in Texas, and a few of those places lock their gates for the year once Monday night is over. What follows is a three-day plan built around venues you can walk into with a GetOut Texas DFW membership, so nobody has to buy four separate sets of tickets.
What Makes Labor Day Weekend Different in DFW This Year
The heat hasn't broken. Early September in North Texas still runs into the mid and upper 90s most afternoons, and any plan that pretends otherwise finishes with somebody crying in a parking lot at two in the afternoon. So the days below are sequenced around water in the morning and air conditioning when the sun is at its worst.
Then there's the water park situation. Hawaiian Falls runs from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day and closes for the year afterward. Whatever you skip this weekend waits until May.
DFW schools went back weeks ago, so this is the last long weekend on anybody's calendar before Thanksgiving. Worth using. And if three days is more than you feel like planning, we've already mapped a two-day version of this weekend that works any time of year.
Saturday: Get in the Water Before Hawaiian Falls Closes for the Year
Start where the clock is running out.
Hawaiian Falls has two Metroplex parks on the GetOut pass, one in Mansfield and one in Roanoke. Both give you multi-story body slides, a wave pool, a lazy river that takes about fifteen minutes to float, and a shaded kids' zone with dump buckets and gentle slides for anyone under four feet. The company put around a million dollars into upgrades before the 2026 season opened, covering food and beverage and general park amenities, so a visit from two summers ago won't match what you'll find now.
One piece of advice matters more than the rest: show up within half an hour of opening. Labor Day Saturday is one of the two or three busiest gate days all season. Arriving at open instead of noon saves you roughly forty-five minutes of standing in line at Tempest Tower, and parking is free either way. Pack your own towels, because the rental stack disappears early.
Live somewhere that makes Mansfield and Roanoke a slog? Hawaiian Waters in Garland and The Colony sit on the same pass and run a nearly identical setup, closer in for the northeast and north-central suburbs. And if the weekend has you driving down I-35 to see family, the GetOut Texas Austin lineup covers its own set of water parks and attractions once you're there.
Gate admission at a DFW water park on a holiday weekend runs somewhere around $45 to $55 a head. Four people, and you're near $200 before anyone has eaten anything. On the pass you scan your phone at the turnstile and walk in.
Sunday Morning: Fort Worth Zoo Before the Heat Sets In
The Fort Worth Zoo keeps landing on national best-zoo lists, holds more than 7,000 animals across 500-plus species, and stays open all 365 days a year. Labor Day weekend included.
What first-timers never get told is that the opening two hours carry the whole visit. Animals move around while the air is still cool. Come one o'clock in September, the big cats have gone flat in whatever shade they can find, several species have wandered back into their barns, and you're pushing a stroller across hot asphalt asking yourself why you came.
Go early, then. Parking runs $5 per vehicle in the main lot. Bear left once you're through the gate and take African Savanna and Elephant Springs while the herds are still up and moving. The Museum of Living Art, which is the herpetarium, has air conditioning throughout and works well as a midpoint when everyone needs twenty minutes indoors. Leave Texas Wild! for the end because it sits nearest the exit.
The zoo is one of several DFW venues that sneak some learning past a kid without them noticing. We went through the educational side of the DFW pass separately if that's the kind of trip you're after.
Hours shift with the season, so check the website the night before rather than trusting a Google result from last spring. And file this away for later in the month: admission drops to half price every Wednesday of the year, though that won't help you on a holiday Sunday.
Sunday Evening: Watch the Sun Go Down From Reunion Tower
Take the afternoon off after the zoo. Go home, run the sprinkler, let people nap. Head downtown around six.
Reunion Tower's GeO-Deck puts you 470 feet over Dallas with a full 360 degrees of view. On a clear evening you can see about 30 miles, which on the right night means picking out the Fort Worth skyline from downtown Dallas. There's an indoor section and an outdoor one, so you can step back into the cool when the rail gets warm. The zoom cameras and telescopes cost nothing extra, and general admission comes with a digital photo you email yourself from a kiosk on the deck.
Book your time slot ahead. The GeO-Deck sells out during peak windows on holiday weekends, and sunset is both the most popular slot and the priciest, with adult general admission running from about $19 up to $40 depending on when you go.
Also: on Sunday, September 6, the deck hosts a food event from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. with tacos and street-style elotes served against the skyline. If you were already planning to go that day, that's your window.
Monday: Main Event, or LEGOLAND Discovery Center and SEA LIFE Grapevine
By Monday the heat has won and everybody's tired. Stay inside.
Teenagers in the group, or no kids at all? Main Event. GetOut covers seven of them around the Metroplex, in Fort Worth, Frisco, Grand Prairie, Grapevine, Lewisville, and Plano, so pick the closest one and stop deliberating. You get bowling, laser tag, gravity ropes, billiards, and an arcade big enough to lose somebody in. A family of four can put $120 through that place on a regular Saturday without trying.
Kids under ten change the answer. Head to Grapevine instead, where LEGOLAND Discovery Center and SEA LIFE Grapevine Aquarium share a building at Grapevine Mills, both available through the GetOut add-on. LEGOLAND has a 4D cinema, two indoor rides, and a Miniland version of the DFW skyline that adults end up studying longer than their children do. SEA LIFE has the ocean tunnel, which reliably stops a six-year-old mid-sentence. When you activate the add-on you pick which of the two you're redeeming in the app, and it's easier to settle that in the car than in the entrance corridor with a kid who's already done waiting.
Four hours out of the sun on September 7 in North Texas is the whole point.
If the Forecast Turns or Plans Fall Apart
North Texas weather does what it likes. Storms roll through Saturday, somebody wakes up sick, and the plan collapses. The DFW pass has a deep indoor bench for that: Sky Zone in Hurst for trampolines, Ripley's Believe It or Not! in Grand Prairie for a bizarre hour, Sci-Tech Discovery Center in Frisco for hands-on exhibits, the National Videogame Museum a few minutes away for a very good walk through arcade history, and Whirlyball Texas if you want to try the strangest team sport anybody in the Metroplex has invented.
That's a short list. There's a longer one covering the full range of kid-friendly things to do around DFW if none of those land.
A membership takes the pressure off in a way prepaid tickets never do. Cancel a day and it costs you nothing.
Leaving Town for the Long Weekend Instead
Plenty of DFW families treat Labor Day as a road trip rather than a staycation, and the same logic applies wherever you end up. Coastal weather pulls a lot of people toward the Gulf, where the GetOut Texas Houston roster runs to museums, indoor karting, and water parks of its own. Anyone headed toward the Hill Country can pick up GetOut Texas San Antonio for the River Walk-adjacent attractions and a handful of things that don't show up on the tourist maps.
Driving north instead? GetOut Oklahoma covers OKC and Tulsa, which turns a three-hour drive into a weekend with something to do at the other end.
What Three Days Actually Costs
Price out the weekend above at the gate, for a family of four:
- Water park day: roughly $180 to $200
- Fort Worth Zoo at weekend rates: about $84, plus $5 to park
- Reunion Tower at a sunset slot: somewhere from $70 to $110
- Main Event, or LEGOLAND and SEA LIFE: $100 to $140
That's north of $440 across three days, and none of it accounts for food, gas, or the gift shop conversation you're going to lose.
A GetOut Texas DFW membership runs $64.95 a person for the year. Four memberships come to about $260, and they cover every venue named above along with roughly 58 more across the Metroplex for the next twelve months. You clear the break-even point somewhere around Saturday lunch. There's a Labor Day sale live on the DFW page right now, so check what it's actually charging before you buy.
The year-long part matters more than people expect. School's already started, so the same membership covers after-school routines that keep paying off through the fall, and it's still good next spring break, which is when a lot of DFW families start looking at GetOut Colorado or somewhere else with cooler air and a completely different set of venues.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is there to do in Dallas-Fort Worth over Labor Day weekend? Water parks, zoos, observation decks, and indoor entertainment centers all stay open. The plan above uses Hawaiian Falls on Saturday, the Fort Worth Zoo and Reunion Tower on Sunday, and either Main Event or LEGOLAND Discovery Center and SEA LIFE Grapevine on Monday.
Are water parks in DFW still open on Labor Day? They are, through the holiday itself. Hawaiian Falls operates Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day and then shuts for the season, so this is the last weekend of the year to go.
What are cheap Labor Day weekend activities for families in Dallas? A multi-venue pass cuts the cost more than anything else you can do. GetOut covers 62-plus DFW attractions on one annual fee, which takes the place of four separate ticket purchases over three days.
What can I do indoors in DFW when it's too hot? Main Event locations, Sky Zone Hurst, the National Videogame Museum, Sci-Tech Discovery Center, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, and the LEGOLAND and SEA LIFE complex in Grapevine are all fully indoor and all on the DFW pass.
Is the GetOut membership worth it for one weekend? It covers its own cost in two or three visits at gate prices. One Labor Day weekend gets you there, and the membership keeps working for the rest of the year.
How does the GetOut pass work at DFW venues? You redeem visits in the GetOut app. Every venue sets its own frequency, some monthly, some quarterly, some once a year, and the frequency shows next to each venue on the DFW page. There's a full walkthrough of how redemption works if you're setting up the app for the first time.
Three Days Left
Summer doesn't end with any kind of ceremony. It ends on a Monday night with a school lunch that needs packing. Pick your three days now instead of Saturday morning, and get the GetOut Texas DFW membership before the sale runs out.